The Precarious State of Italian Film: Between Nostalgia and Aesthetic Failures

The essay will analyse a socio-political film from 2005, Il Vangelo Secondo Precario/The Gospel According to Precarious, directed by Stefano Obino, which attempted to portray the consequences of the growing phenomenon of job insecurity within the contemporary Italian labour market. The film was partly financed with subscriptions of 10 Euros that entitled each subscriber to a DVD of the film and their name in the closing credits. The essay will focus on the movie's failure to deliver a genuine, collective form of audience involvement within a cinematic project, and to address Italy's contemporary social problems outside the restricted framework of an increasingly isolated and provincialized Italian society. It will compare the traditional concept of cinematic authorship in Italy with different cinematic approaches in fine arts, new media, and film: The Tulse Luper Project by Peter Greenaway, Road Movie by Frieze Foundation and Channel4 and Paulo Cohelo's movie The Witch of Portobello made by My Space audiences. These three international case studies will offer a comparison between the traditional Italian concept of authorship and national and international cinematic experimentation. This comparison will provide the opportunity to analyse contemporary Italian directorial approaches which, apart from collaborative ventures undertaken by directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni or the new media TV project NGVision, have not superseded traditional perspectives.